Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: February 16, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
Another week of lots of television watching, and less of doing much else. Dr. H. pulled me off of Concerta last week, upped my lithium and thus a week of drug experimentation went by. Of course, as I was temporarily off the legal meth, I took that as invitation to drink as much caffeine as humanly possible. Which gave me all the speed of the legal meth but none of the focus and concentration. When I look back at my browser later in the day, I would have no idea what the devil I was doing to get me there. Porn? No, but close. My mind is all over the place, and when I did one thing, I would have to do something else at the same time.
No reading, no writing, no letter writing, nothing was done this week.
I worked from home for a bit this week, but like personal work projects, I was all over the place and unable to really complete anything.
For the follow-up call a week later, Dr. H. said I should go back on Concerta gain, so today we start at on 36mg dose. Hopefully this means less sounding like I snorted massive amounts of drugs when I’m writing these posts.

Listening

Reading

Watching

Also weekly watching: Mr. SelfridgeBansheePortlandiaTop Gear UKHouse of LiesElementarySpartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway

Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: February 9, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
Another week of bed rest, another week where I watched too much TV in a variety of guises. This week, I finally ended my round of post-surgery drugs, started taking my ADHD medicines again, and for while, the two overlapped. I was all over the place in my head that even doing anything more than browsing the internets or watching TV was tasking. Definitely no writing, and I’m behind on several writing projects as it is. My brain definitely fees like it is on fire. And that is all about to change again.

Watching

Also weekly watching: PortlandiaTop Gear UKHouse of LiesElementarySpartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway.

Links

x0x0,
Lisa

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: February 2, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
This past week, I had surgery to fix a permanent “squirrelly suture” that was a result from my surgery last summer. Since Tuesday, I’ve been spending most of my days in a lovely drugged haze, in which I have just enough attention to watch a lot of vaguely bad TV in between my gentle snores. The recovery is, fingers crossed, planned to not be as exacting as last summers. I go back to the ortho docs on February 18th for follow up, with hopes to go back to work on February 19th. I’m zero weight baring, so the knee scooter is back. But I spend my days in bed, foot elevated, zoning in and out depending on when I’ve taken the drugs. Shortly after I came home from the surgery, Kristin and I had to write up a proposal for conference submission and it was the hardest thing I could ever do, because  I could not concentrate long enough to cobble two sentences together. Somehow we managed to get the proposal together, but the sheer amount of will it took to write that proposal told me I was not cognizant enough to do anything serious this week. Give me a few days, and I’ll have more of a proper update for you.
Watching
Hyperdrive
I plowed through the entire series in one day. Quick, short, and dripping in sci-fi cultural references, it’s great fun!
Red Dwarf
Beloved cult classic, I started on season one this week and mixed it up with Hyperdrive.
Fringe
Another show I missed when it first aired, so playing catch up via Amazon Instant Video.
Also watching: Spartacus, The Americans, Archer, and Project Runway.
Links

  • Downton Abbey as envisioned as a SNES game
  • For sale: a Hemingway story, never written
  • William Shakespeare gave the English language over 2000 words, here are 20 of them.

 
x0x0,
Lisa

Discoursing on the Beeb

Dear Internet,
In the not too far off past, a friend commented that if he wanted to know what British shows to watch, all he had to do was read my Twitter timeline to garner a list. He wasn’t too far off. I find that about once or twice a week, at least, I’m making recommendations to someone that if they liked X, they may also like Z.  And it’s not just TV either, as it tends to also move into radio, movies, and music.
Usually the first question asked is why I’m so obsessed with British television shows? While it is no secret that I’m an anglophile, I genuinely don’t remember how I got into watching British shows almost exclusively. I think it began about ten years ago when I noticed most movies, music, and books that I was watching, listening, and reading all happened to be from the UK. It also got to the point for awhile where I knew based on a riff, a plot line, or a blurb where in the UK that piece came from.
The follow up question usually ends up moving towards HOW do I get all this content? For the music and books, the answer is usually through Amazon.co.uk. Sometimes in the case of books, UK friends may sort through charity shops or other stores for my wants. I also have a couple of friends who ship me things on a regular basis. A lot of the times, the reason I am buying from a UK site is due to it may be an item that has a long US release or will never be released in the States. Movies are a bit tricky, since the region encoding is different, but I still make do. Radio programs can be had live via the BBC,  or whatever the broadcasting network happens to be, or  archived directly from the show’s site without much fuss. UK licensing scheme is not applied to radio, it seems, only television.
Television, on the other hand, is a whole ‘nother beast. Sometimes UK shows show up on PBS (like Downton Abbey and Call The Midwife), BBC America (Doctor Who and Top Gear),  Showtime (Episodes), or SyFy (Merlin) as a regular series. Other times, they just show up in Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu,or iTunes. Perusing my local library has also unearthed treasures.  Sometimes I have to resort to the back of the truck to get something, but not that often.
Even after explaining all of this, the next question is: How do I find out about all of this stuff? The books and music is pretty easy – usually via recommendations from friends, magazines, samples I read/heard from blogs, or recommendation engines on a website (GoodReads, Amazon, whatever). A lot of the time it comes from pure research on a topic I’m interested in, with suggestions for authors/musicians in that genre. An example would be I used to listen to a Scottish podcast that showcased unsigned Scottish bands, so finding their music usually meant buying directly from the band.  With television, it typically follows along the same lines as the research, and almost always there is an influence. Since I have a love of history, I check BBC History Magazine’s weekly TV/radio suggestions. Podcasts that are UK centric that I listen to on occasion also make reference to upcoming shows/movies.
Alice keeps me updated on older shows I may have missed and most especially my beloved radio shows. (V. important.)
TheHusband jokes that if it’s British, I will almost certainly like it  – and I can’t fault him too badly on this observation since it is most always seemingly true.  This doesn’t mean I glorify everything from the UK as being awesome, for that is certainly not true. In terms of television and movies, the productions values, continuity, acting, and subject matter are almost always inline with my tastes over something produced here in the US. Does this mean all UK series are full of wonder and splendor? No, but it does mean if I have an option of watching Shameless UK vs Shameless US, I’ll pick the UK version every time. I’d also be hard pressed to find a US version of a UK show that was superior to the original.
Note: Seemingly only twelve actors work in all of the UK. This is truth.
I think ultimately it is the rich and long history, coupled with the diversity of island that draws me to it. So much has happened! So many cultures, peoples, languages, and histories, it’s overwhelming. The US is a great plucky upstart, but it has nothing on the depth and breadth of the UK.
It is with this introduction I decided to start (and keep updated) a guide to UK tv& radio, so next time someone says, “I really like X, can you make a recommendation?” I can just give them a link.  (You can also contact me if you think something is missing!)
x0x0,
Lisa

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: January 12, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
Writing

Watching
Freaks and Geeks
I mainlined this show over the course of a day and a half. I fell in love so hard after the first episode, I did not want to savor the show; I wanted to devour it. The storytelling was skillful, it was subtle, and it was very much true. I found myself floating from falling in love with Daniel, then Nick, and finally knowing I had to be with Ken. Lindsay and Kim was very much me at that age, and it made my heart ache. Side note: I think if I had a modicum of understanding from my own parental units Lindsay had with hers, my life would have been widely different. Sam, Neal, and Bill all spoke to various bits of my geeky little heart, and I also saw them reflected in people I knew. High school is a cruel mistress, but the big gift F&G gave me was the ability to relive what I thought were years of hell, looking at it fondly and with genuine pleasure.
After my F&G high, I caught this weeks Big Bang Theory. My opinion on the matter can be found here. After the glory of F&G,  Big Bang Theory is like buying vegan leather pants. No matter how you try to dress it up, it’s still a cheap, poorly made, badly designed knockoff.
Links

x0x0,
Lisa

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: January 5, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
This week is the last week of my staycation (go team academia!), and in addition to working on my plans for kicking ass in 2013, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the web, by cleaning out my Pocket and Evernote stashes along with attempting at some organization of my gReader account.  I ditched Delicious and signed up with Licorize to start a workflow for all of my projects, which also includes cleaning out old saved articles and sites.
When I posted the first CCC, the idea in my head was to have one post for links and another post for my reviews of the week (what I’m reading/listening/watching). Then I realized that was a stupid idea and I should just consolidate everything in one entry instead of two.
Reading
The Far Traveler (Amazon|Local Library|Goodreads)
By Nancy Marie Brown
Sometime in 2010, I started getting interested in medieval history in a very big way, which lead to my interest of Norse mythology (and other origin stories as well as fairytales), and of course, Vikings. There were two things that I loved the most about my recent trip to England: My Cambridge University library reader’s card and seeing the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet in person.  (This also explains why I want to learn Anglo-Saxon.) I stumbled upon The Far Traveler when I read  Brown’s Seven myths we wouldn’t have without Snorri Sturluson on Tor,   Google stalked her, and had this immediately sent via interlibrary loan before the holidays.
This isn’t a straight biography, but a delicate weave of history, stories, ideas, and possibilities that surround Gudrid and her time, based on the various Norse sagas and archaeological fact. Finding bits of cloth at a Viking longhouse sends Brown into how the cloth is made, its purpose, and why it was made. The boats that have been found in digs gives way to how those boats were constructed, what they were used for, and how modern boat makers have constructed similar vessels to understand how the Vikings pillaged the seas as they did. You find yourself not only learning about the period, but also about current archaeological / historical tools and advancements, customs, society, explorations, food, religion  and everything in between. Everything is connected in Brown’s world, which is glorious as it allows Brown’s peeling back of layers to make for a very entertaining as well as educational read.
Watching
Rise of the Guardians
One thing I’ve noticed about my taste as of late in movies is I’m more apt to watch if it is animated over if it is not. There are some exceptions (period pieces anyone?), but almost always I put seeing the cartoons over anything else. Pro tip: Don’t walk into a matinee showing with your 6’6 husband and no child in tow. We got murderous looks from parents and one snobby bitch who kept trying to shuffle seats about in our row. Overall? I loved it, and in many ways it reminded me of Up with its overly hokey positive message, but who cares! It’s hard to not like a movie where Sanata is a Russian iconoclast tattooed within an inch of his life.
Borgia
This is NOT the Showtime series, which I rather like, but a French-German concoction staring the American actor John Doman, Rawls on The Wire, as Rodrigo Borgia. As I said on Twitter the other night, it’s all over the place. But strangely, despite the fact no one has an Roman or Italian accent, and there may be some fudging with the historical details, it’s strangely compelling. It was produced for Italian TV
Hearing
Not much this week, sad to report. I’ve been working on the metadata on my mp3s for my AudioMusicBiographically podcast, which looks like will be up by the end of January. In the mornings, when we’re working out, I’ve been making sure to listen to Girl Talk station on Pandora. But a lot of the time, I’ve been working in silence.
Links

What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa

New Crack: Condo Porn via House Hunters International

Due to our often conflicting schedules, when Justin and I spend time together it has become more often than not in front of the teevee. Lately, this has more to do with the fact that I often don’t get home until late or he is often working late, so planning for things outside the home tends to get a bit chaotic. Despite the copious amount of time we spend on the couch, what we watch tends to be an agreed upon listing of “together” teevee as opposed to whatever is available on the DVR. Our tastes in television and movies is more often than not, polar opposites: He likes depressing, post-apocalyptic, foreign, pretentious materials. In movies, if it has Nazis, an unhappy ending or some kind of mutilation/violence aspect to it, he loves it. I, on the other hand, tend to go for a bit lighter fare such as period dramas, indie films, or something with a twist.
Television is much the same way in that he loves sports (primarily football and basketball), the Hitler channel, Jeopardy! (You’d think I was marrying a 70 year old.) or something along the lines of the aforementioned topics. Personally, I am a sucker for series (In Justin’s opinion, read: crappy) television, stocking up on guilty pleasures such as Gossip Girls 1, Grey’s Anatomy or The Big Bang Theory to name a few.
But with the weather getting colder and our ability to go outside becoming less of a reality these days, we’ve started watching series shows on premium channels (Nurse Jackie, Dexter, The Tudors, and Bored To Death), but the problem with these shows is that the series’ are much shorter than network television and we have gotten into the habit of watching the entire series within a week or two, catching up on back episodes and having marathons. Thus, we are back at square one with nothing to watch.
A few weeks ago, friends of ours tipped us off to a HGTV show called House Hunters International. The point of the show is that a person/couple/families/whatever are looking to buy in X locale for Y reason, and they need help to find their home/condo/apartment/flat/beach front mansion with Z budget. A local to the area real estate agent takes the wish list and presents the person/couple/family/whatever with a listing of properties that match their requests. The person/couple/family/whatever then select from the top three choices as their next crib.
The show format never varies, thus it is always consistent from episode to episode: Intro to the house hunters, their background, their budget, where they are moving to and why. The viewer is then shown clips of the house hunter going through three properties, their likes/dislikes of the properties and the “finale” of their selection of one of those three properties and why the chose said property. In short, it is the same formula on every show regardless of who/what or where the show is being taped. There is also very little surprise as to what the house hunter chooses in that based upon their wishlist, location and budget, 90% of the time we correctly guesstimate which property they end up choosing and it is almost always property #2.
At first glance, this show doesn’t sound like something that would interest me in the slightest. I don’t consider myself a domestic goddess, my panties don’t get wet at the thought of a new vacuum (I was pelted by a vacuum ad on HGTV’s website that bothered the piss out of me and wouldn’t let me read the site until the ad did its thing. Usability fail.), nor do I get passionate when discussing herringbone versus parquet floors. These things, however, excite Justin. He spends hours every week not only cruising real estate sites for the search for our perfect home but he also has a surprisingly aesthetic appeal to what he likes and doesn’t like.
We’ve spent dozens of hours pouring over real estate ads for condos in a variety of markets around the US and we’ve picked apart every nuance from the floors, to the window treatments and bathrooms. What does interested me about HHI is that it appeals to my wanderlust in the hopes that someday in the future (hopefully nearer than farther), we might be able to move and live abroad. I see HHI as research then, to get an idea of what the markets are like around the globe and what our budget (roughly about $400K USD) would get us in other countries.
In Paris, that would barely buy us a pied-à-terre while in Fuji, that’s beach front mansion and even better, in Buenos Aires, that would give us a nice sized condo in a great location. What also interests me about the show is that I’m nosy and I want to know what people do for a living to make the kind of money they make — especially the ones who talk about buying a home on the Amalfi Coast and their budget is $750K USD but hey, the villa they really want is $1M USD, so they buy that one even though it’s over their “budget.” Then there are the people who are buying second or third homes — and I wonder, what the hell do they do to juggle all those mortgages and they seemingly always have some generic job such as “marketing manager” or “mid-level manager.”
What kills us though is the over expectations these people have. “I want a 2 bed, 2 bath, 1000 sqft condo in Paris for $400k USD, with a ‘view,’ American kitchen, and a bathtub. And oh! I have to have the outdoor living space!” When shown that for $400k gets them a 5 story walk-up in one of the outer districts, at 600 sqft and the bathtub is a little bigger than the sink, they get all indigent. Specifically when for that range, the properties are fixer uppers.
Maybe then this is why we are so addicted to the show and we push through 4-6 episodes a night, which sounds like a lot but considering that each show is only 30 minutes long, take out the commercials its down to about 15-20 minutes and we do watch a few of them in our bedroom as we are getting ready for bed. Also, the show is on ALL THE TIME. While we were gone for two days over Thanksgiving, we had 20 new episodes to view on our DVR. Currently, our DVR is telling us that there are 43 new episodes to be recorded in the next two weeks.
Plus we like the snark value, picking on people’s poor taste and decisions, wondering why they were idiots in choosing a cookie cutter home in X neighborhood instead of going with the one with character outside of their favorite neighborhood. Why they would paint X color in Y room over leaving the current combination alone or even better, when they misuse terminology to make it sound like they know what they are talking about. The crack is getting a little out of hand in that we’ve decided to start DVRing regular House Hunters, to give us an idea of what markets look like around the US and makes it much easier than hunkering around a laptop looking at grainy photos of properties in various areas. Even if we have a spare hour before bed, we watch HHI.
This is getting bad.
But I’m not sure if I am capable of asking for help.
Yet.

1. I will maintain and stand by that Gossip Girls is perhaps one of the better written “adult” dramas on television. I’ve started stop watching most network television this season as many of the shows I used to love have become convoluted messes with wooden characters, plots that beyond ridiculous and of course, the trusty jumping of the shark.

hannibal

if there are but two movies i have been eagerly awaiting the release of this year, it’s been harry potter (yes yes, I’m a huge fan of harry potter and got a lot of nifty cool stuff for Xmas that was harry potter based) and Hannibal.
Harry Potter i could easily explain because of my obsession with the books, but even though I saw “silence of the lambs” and i liked it (not loved it), i became obsessed with seeing the movie. maybe because i have a slight obsession with serial killers, or maybe it looked gruesome, i have no idea other than i had to see this goddamn movie.
since Friday night is logans night round these parts, there was talk about going to go see it after dinner last night, but because I’m old and cranky, paul and i decided to go see it after hitting the chiropractor Saturday morning.
now, i have NOT read the series of books by Thomas Harris yet (red dragon, silence of the lambs or Hannibal); which is unlike me since i generally read the books movies are based on. So in going into the movie, i went with eyes wide open and with a clear mind.
now gore or horror movies don’t freak me out — but suspense thrillers do. i was totally expecting something as involved as SOTL, but boy was I wrong.
the good points: the cinematography was beautiful. the shots of Florence and NoVa were beautiful and the scenery was breathtaking. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter was satirical with his tag lines of “Okay dokey”. But other than that, the movie was not that great.
It wasn’t awful either — so don’t take it the wrong way. The problem is that the movie seemed to be billed as suspenseful and horrifying when it really wasn’t. The ending, which everyone kept saying was horrific and gruesome, wasn’t and it was very obvious they were using CGI for the scenes. Julianne Moore, whom I love, was fine as Clarice Starling, but it was obvious she was nothing more than an accessory in the movie and yet was billed as staring. The movie in no way explores the relationship between Hannibal and Clarice, which it should have, but more focuses on Hannibal and his returning to the “scene” of his crimes.
Over all, on a rating scale, I’d give it a 3 out of 5 stars. I would recommend seeing it for the pure factor of Hopkins and his satirical speeches and the humor he plays out onto himself, but the gore/suspense and the thrill just wasn’t there.
I have heard the book is slightly different from the movie, and that they are planning on remaking “ManHunter” (based on the first book, Red Dragon) with Hopkins and several of the comments on the book itself have been summed up as “a manuscript produced in paperback form”.
When I finish reading the series (which I’ve ordered from Amazon), I’ll let you know what my final verdict is.
x0x0x0x
lisa

this is my story and i’m sticking to it

paul got fired.
from his job.
apparently what had happened, was that VA Linux (after the merger with Andover) went through and fired 30 of the 100 employees — who were all top management/CXX something or another. While paul was technically a senior programmer, he was listed as director of e- commerce (at 20! go beat that!).
Pauls in better spirits than I am. i hate rejection. I hate not knowing what’s going to happen (on the flip side, every time I’ve gotten fired, I’ve always known I’d get another job).
Paul is the exact same way. Since he found out yesterday afternoon, he has been on the phone scheduling interviews and sending out his resume. He’s fast asleep snoring right now from doing more work in the last two days looking for a damn job than he has in a long time (so I feel). 😉
I’m teasing, of course.
Vandover was gracious enough to give him a months severance plus his two week vacation time PLUS he still has one month on his health insurance (unlike me when I was frog marched out of Slip.Net).
The silver lining is that I got a bonus and a raise and can call myself a “Senior” systems engineer at UUnet. whoopee.
Or something.
Plus I got a new boss — so I’m mucho happy. I like my new boss. She’s nifty.
I’m not handling pauls firing as well as he is. I’ve gone through more chocolate and eating binges than you can shake a stick at. Paul’s happy because basically with his mad skillz he knows that he can find another job fairly quickly and the extra money is just that — extra money. But technically, I’m the breadwinner in the household, and I’m scared. because what if he DOESN’T find another job (unlikely) and then the obsession starts again.
I’ve repeated myself here haven’t i?
blame ciannait for starting on the obsession.
no really.
Another obsession I’ve found is the tv show “angel”. okay you can stop laughing now. I’m being serious.
I was BORED BORED BORED tonight (paul was redoing his resume –again to make it perfect) and i was tired from having gone to the chiropractor earlier in the morning to be aligned. all i wanted to do was rest and watch teevee.
we have 145 channels and NOTHING IS EVER ON. finally i realize the only thing that is on worth watching is “Buffy” and “Angel” afterwards. Buffy, was at best, okay. Angel was much better and I enjoyed wasting 60 minutes on fluff. Plus Angel is a damn hottie. So now that I’ve gotten this new obsession, I’ve been combing the web looking for information about the previous season. This whole fanfic thing scares me. People are damn crazy.

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